Studio behind Soulslike Bleak Faith addresses allegations of Elden Ring asset ‘theft’

videogameschronicle.com:

The studio behind a newly released Soulslike game has defended itself from allegations that it stole assets from Elden Ring.

Bleak Faith: Forsaken was released on March 10 and currently has ‘mixed’ reviews on the Steam store, with negative reviews citing numerous bugs at launch.

However, controversy was sparked when Dark Souls modding tool developer Meowmaritus posted a video showing footage from the game next to footage from Elden Ring.

When compared side by side, the player and enemy animations in each video appear to be identical, suggesting the animations were lifted from Elden Ring and used in Bleak Faith.

“Saw this footage floating around,” Meowmaritus wrote. “Bleak Faith: Forsaken is 100% using animations ripped directly 1:1 from Elden Ring.

“I do NOT condone people using my DS Anim Studio software to aid in exporting animations to include in commercial products or sell them on Epic Games Store.”

While numerous players immediately accused Bleak Faith developer Archangel Studios of plagiarism, one of the game’s artists has now claimed they were unaware where the assets originally came from.

In a statement made on the officialBleak Faith Discord server on Saturday, developer ‘überfaith42’ claimed that the animations were purchased as part of an asset pack made available for sale on the Epic Games Store.

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“We’re always been transparent about using the Epic Marketplace for animations that are good and fit our theme,” they wrote. “The rest I made – we just needed more variety and I’m not an animator by trade, I had to learn for this game.”

“The only other things from the Epic Marketplace that I use is for generic VFX that was a waste